Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Representing Heritage without Territory—The Khmer Rouge at the UNESCO in Paris during the 1980s and their Political Strategy for Angkor

2015; Springer Nature; Linguagem: Inglês

10.1007/978-3-319-13638-7_10

2191-6578

Michael Falser,

Vietnamese History and Culture Studies

In the modern history of Cambodia, the temples of Angkor were constantly (ab)used for identity constructions by the actual ruling powers. In this game, the years between 1979 and 1989 represent a unique case study: While the Cambodian territory itself was occupied by the Vietnamese Heng Samrin-regime, the resistance movements around the Khmer Rouge were driven out of the country but recognized by the United Nations as the legal Khmer government under the name of Democratic Kampuchea. As a clever political strategy and in coalition with the former King Norodom Sihanouk, its political leaders around Khieu Samphan and Ieng Sary appropriated the Western discourse on national cultural heritage: with its Permanent UNESCO-Delegation in Paris, the “safeguarding of Angkor” was promoted as an inseparable part of the diplomatic struggle towards national independence. This paper tries to analyse the ways and means of the “Angkor-as-heritage discourse” of the Khmer Rouge/Democratic Kampuchea in the 1980s, including the reactions of UNESCO and the international community.